"Lawyers for supporters and opponents of Kansas City’s streetcars sparred Tuesday at a hearing to determine the legality of a new taxing district that could help fund extensions to the downtown starter route.

Attorney Doug Stone, speaking on behalf of the City Council, told Jackson County Circuit Judge Marco Roldan that the proposed taxing district meets all Missouri law requirements and should be declared legal."

"Downtown Kansas City scored a triple play Thursday when two apartment projects totaling more than 300 units won incentives necessary to begin work and a plan to double the size of the Crossroads Academy charter school was approved.

The larger of the two apartment proposals is the biggest residential project to date in the West Bottoms area, a 251-unit redevelopment that includes a historic building at 933 Mulberry St. The smaller project is a new 56-unit building in the River Market area.

The Planned Industrial Expansion Authority granted the Reeder Family Trust a 15-year abatement for its project called The View at the West Bottom II.

The $30 million redevelopment plan calls for renovating the nine-story building on Mulberry Street into 189 apartments and two nearby smaller buildings at 1200 and 1218 Union St. into 62 apartments. The abatement is for 95 percent of the new value for 10 years and 50 percent for five."

"Construction is underway on Mission 106, an addition to the successful mixed-use Mission Farms development in Leawood.

Radd Way, executive vice president at The Weitz Co. LLC's Lenexa office, said work on the residential development, which includes 132 apartments and seven for-rent townhomes, has been underway for about a month. Way said Weitz, which is building the $30 million project, is done with its grading work and it will begin installing the foundation soon.

The 206,000 square-feet of buildings — including the four-story tall apartment buildings, the town homes, 6,000 square feet of speculative office space, a 16,000 square-foot podium deck and a 206 stall, four-story parking garage — should be completed by around June 2015, he said."

The project will take the place of the grassy field at the top right corner of the photo, adjacent to I-435 (photo from NSPJ Architects).

"After eight years of delays in attempting to develop the Mission Gateway project at Johnson Drive and Roe Avenue, developer Tom Valenti said he's not making any more promises.

But he's not giving up either, Valenti insisted during a breakfast meeting held Friday to update Mission residents on the Gateway and Johnson Drive reconstruction projects.

Valenti did say that a proposed 150,000-square-foot Walmart store, which replaced an aquarium as the project's anchor tenant in 2012, remained committed to the project and wasn't in jeopardy. But while he acknowledged that Walmart's lease could be voided if Gateway isn't developed by a certain date, Valenti would not say what that deadline is."

This development has become so incredibly disappointing. It should have been so special. Now it looks like nothing is going to happen at all. Maybe a Walmart and/ or a strip mall. It was of course supposed to be mixed-use and a destination site. The gateway to Mission.

This site is a great location to densify an inner ring suburb. To the west is the city and to the east is a great commercial street, as good of one we have in any of our inner ring suburbs. Johnson Drive almost feels like it's in the city. Creating a large mixed-use development on this site would do a lot toward connecting Mission to the city. It would work very well with any future rail lines we extend out to Johnson Drive.

"Leaders of the KCI citizens task force say that despite the difficulties, they think they can soon forge a consensus on whether to renovate the airport’s terminals or build a new one.

That decision is intended to guide one of the Kansas City area’s most important public building projects of the next decade.

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The three choices that Frasca and Associates aviation consultants identified for the task force:

• Major expansion on the individual horseshoe terminals, with additional passenger screening, new parking facilities and roadway reconfigurations, at a rough cost of more than $700 million. Shuttle buses would still connect the terminals.

• A new central passenger screening area connecting the existing terminals, which would be repurposed as secure passenger concourses, plus new parking and roadway configurations, at a rough cost of more than $700 million. Some kind of moveable walkway might be required through the concourses.

• A new single terminal, plus new parking and other features, at a rough cost of $800 million to $1.2 billion.

Koster said some details emerged very recently and haven’t been thoroughly discussed. And he still thought the group should consider a fourth option of baseline repairs to the three terminals, which the Aviation Department has roughly estimated at $365 million to $460 million."

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Just my opinion but I think the new single terminal is the best option. KCI feels like an underground WWII bunker (exposed jagged concrete looking ceilings just aren't a good look), it is so congested (inside security) that I feel like I'm back in Asia trying to board a Beijing bound train, and the concessions/dining are woefully limited inside security, as well as the restrooms being severely under-present/flat out "out of order" oftentimes.

However the passenger traffic at KCI certainly doesn't warrant a new terminal, especially with the Wright Amendment being lifted at Dallas Love, meaning that all those Midway-Kansas City flights (with Chicago boarded passengers), can now skip Kansas City entirely (same story for STL) and fly straight to Dallas, so I'd expect the number of Dallas bound flights to decrease later in the year when all the restrictions are repealed in October and when Midway-Dallas flights begin on October 13.

Logistically, a new terminal would be located on the southern end of the airport, so what would that mean to all the services at the northern end (i.e. hotels, rental cars, etc.), they'd probably need to extend their shuttle services down to the southern end.

And in terms of who would pay for this, I think they've proposed the standard flight/rental car surcharge, or was it a sales tax increase (not certain...)?

This development has become so incredibly disappointing. It should have been so special. Now it looks like nothing is going to happen at all. Maybe a Walmart and/ or a strip mall. It was of course supposed to be mixed-use and a destination site. The gateway to Mission.

This site is a great location to densify an inner ring suburb. To the west is the city and to the east is a great commercial street, as good of one we have in any of our inner ring suburbs. Johnson Drive almost feels like it's in the city. Creating a large mixed-use development on this site would do a lot toward connecting Mission to the city. It would work very well with any future rail lines we extend out to Johnson Drive.

(sigh) What a fail.

Why can't they get this project off the ground? Other projects that were on hold/stopped building during the recession (Corbin Park and Prairie Fire in Overland Park, and Park Place in Leawood), are now building towards completion, while this project never even moved dirt. I would think there is demand for a retail project like this in Mission......

Why can't they get this project off the ground? Other projects that were on hold/stopped building during the recession (Corbin Park and Prairie Fire in Overland Park, and Park Place in Leawood), are now building towards completion, while this project never even moved dirt. I would think there is demand for a retail project like this in Mission......

I really have no idea. I think the developer just sucks. A developer that knew what they were doing would probably have no problem getting this done. It's such a great site for god's sake.

"Burns & McDonnell’s plan for a $130 million headquarters expansion project at 9400 Wornall Road cleared its first hurdle Tuesday when a development agency endorsed its request for tax increment financing assistance.

The fast-growing Kansas City-based engineering firm wants to build the addition next to its world headquarters at 9400 Ward Parkway to accommodate the 2,100 additional employees it expects to hire over the next decade.

The employee-owned business now employs 4,300 people overall, 2,600 of them locally. It was recently ranked as the 18th-largest engineering firm in the country by Engineering News-Record, a trade publication."

For eight years, JJ’s restaurant stood in the shadows of a massive construction project just across the street.

Then, as the construction activity was about to end, the popular restaurant near the Country Club Plaza blew up. A natural-gas leak caused a fiery explosion that killed one restaurant worker and injured others.

On Wednesday, JJ’s owners — brothers Jimmy and David Frantze — announced they will reopen in late summer on the very development site that caused them so much grief.

“Ironic isn’t the word for it. We’ll have to come up with another word,” Jimmy Frantze said at a news conference. “But JJ’s is back.”

The Frantzes are leasing 4,800 square feet just off the lobby of the Plaza Vista office building at 900 W. 48th Place. JJ’s also will have a 1,600-square-foot patio along Roanoke Parkway."

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Photos from the KC Star & International Business Times. The explosion was extremely large and engulfed the entire block nearly. I'll refrain from posting photos of the fire on here seeing as one individual's life was lost and 15 others were injured.......but you can google it to see how large of a fire it actually was.

"Kansas City has approved condemning a towering billboard at 20th and Main streets, a big step needed for a developer to move forward with a planned $16 million hotel project in the Crossroads Arts District.

The proposed 110-room Hilton Home2 Suites would occupy the southeast corner of 20th and Main streets, but before it can proceed, a billboard owned by Lamar Advertising has to be removed. The pole sign also has been protected by a “perpetual” visual easement that says nothing can obstruct its view.

On Thursday, the Kansas City Council unanimously designated the sign as blighted, beginning the condemnation process.

“We’re very happy that the development seems to be moving forward and we’re committed to the project,” said Jason Swords with Sunflower Development Group. “It’s located on the streetcar route and would continue to redevelop that part of the Crossroads.”

Swords is working on the five-story Hilton Home2 Suites deal on behalf of Overland Park-based True North Hotel Group."

“It’s looks like we’re not the only ones excited about 95th and Metcalf,” said Owen Buckley, president of Lane4 Property Group.

He was surveying a crowd of about 200 who turned out Thursday evening for the first of two public meetings aimed at gathering neighbors’ input on the future of the Metcalf South and 95 West shopping center properties in Overland Park.

Lane4 announced in March that it had teamed with The Kroenke Group of Columbia to buy the two largely vacant retail centers from MD Management for redevelopment. The centers are on a total of 62 acres at the northeast and southeast corners of 95th Street and Metcalf Avenue.

The future of the vacant Indian Springs Mall, as desolate as it is visible along Interstate 635, is poised to be the responsibility of Lane4 Property Group, a local real estate firm familiar with urban redevelopment.

The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., which bought the mall in 2007, plans to hire Lane4 as its broker for the shopping center. It’s the first time the Unified Government has reached out to the private sector for help on finding a new use for the obsolete mall at I-635 and State Avenue.

The 700,000-square-foot enclosed shopping center opened in 1971 and lost its last anchor department store in 2001.

“Our intent is to get someone in on the site with a good background in urban redevelopment and mixed-use projects,” said Doug Bach, deputy county administrator for economic development. “We think Lane4 brings that together.”
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Kiss co-founders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley aren’t in town yet — not until a sold-out fundraiser in late May — but their Rock & Brews restaurant opened Tuesday night in Overland Park’s Prairiefire development at 5701 W. 135th St., between Lamar and Nall avenues.
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The first Rock & Brews opened in the Los Angeles area in 2009. Now there are three Rock & Brews in the Los Angeles area, one in Los Cabos, Mexico, and another in the Hawaiian island of Maui (some of the favorite haunts of the founders).

Restaurants also are in development in Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas.

Theatrical lighting and iconic rock art surround the ceiling, which soars to about 25 feet. Garage doors line two sides of the space and will open to the patio in nicer weather. A children’s play area also is going up on the patio, and it will be dog- friendly.

Multiple TVs are turned to the top rock videos of the last few decades, but the founders said they want their restaurants to be family friendly and quiet enough that tables can converse easily.

The historic Lyric Theatre, silent since the symphony and opera left in 2011, could resound with the bounce of basketballs and other healthy racket under a plan being explored for a proposed downtown YMCA.

Supporters of the Downtown Y Community Center plan had been focused on a site at 10th Street and Grand Boulevard for the past year but are pausing now to explore two other options that would eliminate the need for an estimated $9 million, 500-space parking garage.

“We’ve been doing very well with fund raising,” said Peter DeSilva, the business executive leading the Y fundraising. “The one challenge has been raising money for a garage. There’s not a lot of philanthropists who want their name on a garage.”

DeSilva, president and chief operating officer of UMB Financial Corp., said the Y has been approached by the owner of the Lyric at 11th and Central streets on a renovation plan for that historic property.

Kansas City should replace its existing three terminals with a new single terminal at KCI Airport, a citizens group that has spent the past year studying improvements recommended Wednesday.

Nineteen of the KCI Terminal Advisory Group’s 24 members voted in favor of building a new single terminal subject to more information on costs.

The advice from the KCI Terminal Advisory Group echoes a plan that the city’s Aviation Department had put forth but that many in the public have rejected out of love for the current convenient parking-to-gate distances.

The citizens’ recommendation is intended to guide the city toward one of the most important civic building projects of the next decade. The Aviation Department has said it needs to modernize the 40-year-old airport that many Kansas City residents and travelers adore just the way it is.
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